The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
A charismatic editor of *French Elle* awakens from a coma with locked-in syndrome, determined to write his memoir using only the blink of one eye, racing against time and his fading strength to reclaim his voice.
“Let your imagination set you free.”
Synopsis
Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of the French fashion magazine *Elle*, suffered a severe stroke at the age of 43. The injury to his brain stem left him with locked-in syndrome, a condition that left him nearly fully paralyzed and capable of communication only through blinking his left eye. Using this method, Bauby dictated his memoir, one word at a time.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 39
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Juliette WelflingShot by Janusz KaminskiScored by Paul CantelonDesigned by Michel Eric
Box Office
2007 · Box office
⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 1.4× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$19.8M
US & Canada: $6.0M — 30% of worldwide · International: $13.8M (70%)
Opening weekend: $76K — 1% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.
Opening week (7-day): $113K — 2% of its US & Canada run.
Peak 3 theaters
Full synopsis
Also known as
- Die Taucherglocke und der Schmetterlingde
- Schmetterling und Taucherglockede
- Taucherglocke und Schmetterlingde
- The Diving Bell And The Butterflyen
- Lo scafandro e la farfallait
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Cast & Crew
39 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Mathieu Amalric
as Jean-Do
Emmanuelle Seigner
as Céline
Marie Josee Croze
as Henriette Roi
Anne Consigny
as Claude
Patrick Chesnais
as Le Docteur Lepage
Niels Arestrup
as Roussin
Olatz Lopez Garmendia
as Marie Lopez
Jean Pierre Cassel
as Père Lucien et le Vendeur
Marina Hands
as Joséphine
Max Von Sydow
as Papinou
Isaach De Bankole
as Laurent
Emma De Caunes
as Empress Eugenia
Supporting cast
16Jean Philippe Ecoffey
as Doctor Mercier
Gerard Watkins
as Doctor Cocheton
Nicolas Le Riche
as Ninjinski
Theo Sampaio
as Théophile
Fiorella Campanella
as Céleste
Talina Boyaci
as Hortense
Anne Alvaro
as Betty
Francoise Lebrun
as Madame Bauby
Zinedine Soualem
as Joubert
Laure De Clermont Tonnerre
as Diane
Agathe De La Fontaine
as Inès
Marie Meyer
as Mannequin
Ilze Bajare
as Mannequin
Anna Chyzh
as Mannequin
Lenny Kravitz
as Himself
Michael Wincott
as Fashion Photographer
Directors
1Writers
2Producers
2Other crew
6Parents Guide
AI Personalities
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